


The Demon's Prayer

by Davechicken



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: BDSM, Explicit and consensual pain, Graphic Violence, M/M, Masochism, Please don't read if you do not like these things thank you, Religious Guilt, blood mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 16:09:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19403806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: Crowley never talks when he’s like this. Aziraphale will brighten the minute he senses him, but by minute two, he will see the tension written across that lithe frame. The pointed way the demon slinks, as if there’s more bones and less muscle than his body should have. Their eyes meet only once, so Aziraphale can be sure he understands. An agreement of a wholly different sort.The demon walks past him, into the back room of the shop. He doesn’t bother to flip the ‘closed’ sign, or lock up. He leaves that to the angel, so there’s enough time for them both to prepare.





	The Demon's Prayer

Crowley never talks when he’s like this. Aziraphale will brighten the minute he senses him, but by minute two, he will see the tension written across that lithe frame. The pointed way the demon slinks, as if there’s more bones and less muscle than his body should have. Their eyes meet only once, so Aziraphale can be sure he understands. An agreement of a wholly different sort.

The demon walks past him, into the back room of the shop. He doesn’t bother to flip the ‘closed’ sign, or lock up. He leaves that to the angel, so there’s enough time for them both to prepare.

Aziraphale solemnly rises, and turns the sign the correct way. His fingers slide the latch, and he wills them not to shake. It is important, this ritual. It is necessary.

That is what he tells himself as he forces his head high, and he walks into the back room. Crowley is already stripped to the waist. He’s still wearing his sunglasses, and he won’t take them off. Bent over the wooden table, grasping the furthest end, his feet planted squarely. It exposes the pale length of his perfect back, and the trail of his spine as it argues with his skin. 

In other circumstances, Aziraphale might find it beautiful. Right now, though, all he feels is compassion and regret. He allows himself the indulgence of sweeping two fingers down from nape to waistband, causing a growl of protest that he tells himself is his payment for this transaction. After all, that is what Arrangements are. Give and Take. And he is about to Give far too much.

The demon won’t ask, demand, or beg. Not with his words. He radiates frustrated need and arches to show it. One leg trembles, and Aziraphale hates to watch this. What comes next is worse, but then after it will all go away. (Until next time.)

 _I do wish you didn’t need this_.

_But I do._

He can even hear the whole conversation if he listens hard enough, but watching this agony pulls at his strings, makes him ache in echoed sympathy. He imagines he can kiss below each wing-nub, soothe away the tension. Imagines what it would be like to find the real solution, a lasting one that meant his demon didn’t suffer any longer... but that is not reality, and reality is often cruel and complex and beyond anything but best-guesses and survival.

He retrieves the pen from his inner pocket. A fine gift from the demon below, and one he regrets has come to this. The barrel is a translucent, opalescent stone, and the nib is pure silver. There is no ink in it – hasn’t been for centuries – and he uncaps it, wielding it like the sword he gave away so long ago.

It is, of course, supposed to be mightier. At times like this, he understands.

Aziraphale stands between those parted legs, and allows himself one last brush of a shoulder-blade, as if cleaning dust. It makes Crowley more restless, and he chides himself for his reluctance and lack of compassion. Kindness is a cruelty, right now. The only kindness Crowley needs is what’s in this pen. 

He closes his eyes and sends a silent prayer of his own, then starts to dip the nib against his flesh.

To begin, the letters he inscribes in perfectly neat calligraphic script simply leave the ghostly after-impression of pressure, but as the words build up, that changes to red inflammation as if he’d scraped through the surface of his skin.

Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς...

(Our Father, who art in Heaven...)

The Greek, of course, is essential. It could be Aramaic, it could be Latin, it could even be English. But the Greek is what he always chooses. It feels... better, for some reason. 

The words that fell from Jesus’ lips and echoed down on so many Human ones are torturous for his demon. Too Holy, too pure. The promise and request that connects Heaven and Earth sear into his skin, making his thighs shake and his skin hiss softly in rejection. 

Why must he do this? Why? Why does he need something that hurts him so badly, and why is it never enough? Why can’t he accept either Heaven or Hell, and instead stays in this no-man’s land, hating and needing both? Aziraphale feels bile in his throat, righteous anger and indignation. His demon punishes them both with his craven addiction. Himself in the sting of absolution he won’t accept he needs, and the angel in committing such an act of violence and pain. He _hates_ to hurt him. Hates to be the cause of his agony. And he knows he has to, because no one else would. He knows it has to be him, and he hopes – prays – howls inside his head and heart – that it offers some small amount of penance and catharsis for the demon stretched below him.

The words draw to a close, and the demon is bleeding by the end of the prayer. His frame finding the touch of Heaven too close to his inner brimstone and dark spaces, as the two wage their own war over a few feet of flesh. 

He finishes, and closes the pen delicately away. 

Crowley’s feet paw at the ground as he keeps his suffering to quiet grunts and rough breaths. It doesn’t get better, just draws out and turns the prayer into a curse. One that makes Aziraphale angry, angry that such love should cause such pain. He wants to wash the blood and the injury away, and he moves to do it.

(He used to barely last to the end of the verses. He used to need it to stop as soon as it was over. He knows it’s longer, each time, and he can’t tell if that’s because Crowley can stand more of Heaven, or needs more of the Hell of it.)

“D-don’t,” comes the harsh order, a rare interjection into the proceedings.

But I need to. I’ve hurt you. I need to heal you. I need to see this make you better. I need to know I’m not wicked for doing this to you. I need...

“Please.” The single word from Crowley’s lips is a prayer of its own. He asks, he doesn’t demand. He asks for a small forgiveness, a small mercy, in the only way he understands. Punishment that began long ago and never truly stopped. 

Aziraphale feels love and hate so intensely that his head swims. Why won’t he admit he was wrong? Why won’t She accept his overtures? Why is everything always so broken and terrible?

“I can’t,” he replies, his voice breaking. “I can’t bear it.”

“Please,” Crowley says, again, and he’s utterly begging. He’s clearly on the edge of blacking out or slipping out of his body, the convulsions making him jitter and buck. 

“You’re hurting.”

So is Aziraphale. He can’t stand it, no matter how much Crowley needs him to, and he rushes his feelings against him. 

It’s terrible form. Utterly unspeakable. To make someone else feel, empathically, what you’re suffering. Without permission. To force your sense of self and the world on someone – anyone – and to violate their emotional core. But Aziraphale is just as tortured, and he needs Crowley to feel it in the same way Crowley needs him to witness his own.

Crowley screams, then. The empathy and love and forgiveness and tangled up emotion of an angel (another one, because he is, too, if... fallen... he’s still cut from the same stock). It’s beyond what he can handle, and he starts to thrash in unbridled pain. 

Aziraphale places his hands on Crowley’s back, pushing warmth and affection in, erasing the words from the surface. The blood seeps over his fingers at first, then vanishes back inside. Dermis knits anew, leaving no trace of the silvery-scar writing, and there’s the world washed clean. 

The demon stops screaming, but he’s still shaking. Over-wrought and broken down. He isn’t fixed. Not if the Paternoster makes him burn up like this. But maybe each time he comes closer.

It’s his own reluctance to be forgiven that keeps him here. His own rejection of what he craves and longs for. Aziraphale hates that it’s come to this. Hates that his demon thinks the only way back to the Light is to hurt enough to see it. But if it’s the only way to give him any sense of peace, he will torture them both to do it.

Crowley doesn’t thank him. He’s too far gone, and he can’t ever admit to what they do. He’s spoken more than he has in hundreds of years, today, and the angel hopes – oh so fiercely – that it means it’s working. Something. 

He wants to take him in his arms and hold him. Cradle him to his chest. Swaddle him in soft wings. Embrace him through the come-down, whisper forgiveness and reassurance into his heart.

But Crowley won’t allow that. He normally wants Aziraphale to leave rather soon, so he can gather himself and leave like nothing happened. 

No. Not this time. He knows Crowley will never consent to moving, or to engaging in anything soft right now, so he lies above him, and presses his too-stuffy and smartly-dressed chest along the demon’s bare back. He hugs him, spoons against him, nuzzles his neck and just lets the edges of his affection graze against his mind. 

The demon goes tense, expecting something bad, or something he can’t allow. But Aziraphale goes no further, and he slowly feels the way Crowley relents and surrenders below him. 

It isn’t enough. But it’ll do for now.


End file.
